Many critics thought Before Sunset was superior to the original film and attributed this to how the characters, actors and directors matured over the years, as well as Hawke and Delpy's contribution to the screenplay (which was nominated for an Oscar).

The same is being said now about Before Midnight.

Fridge Brilliance: Of the meta kind. Before Sunrise and Before Sunset are rather unconventional in that they don't have much of a plot or structure of any kind. Hell, they barely have a score. Before Midnight, however, is more like a traditional, conventional film - a reflection of Jesse and Celine, and how theirs has become a conventional adult relationship.

Reality Subtext: The first film was born from the night Richard Linklater spent with a woman named Amy in Philadelphia. Unlike Jesse and Celine, they exchanged contact info and tried the long distance relationship, but things fizzled out, so the ending of Before Sunrise became Linklater's idealised version of events. Linklater admitted later that he hoped Amy would see the film and get in contact, but that never happened. A decade later, that idealised notion became part of Before Sunset, in which Jesse wrote a novel about the events of the previous film and Celine read it and got in contact. It wasn't until 2009 that Linklater learned Amy had passed away fifteen years earlier, and thus never saw the original film.

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